New-Tech Europe | Aug 2019 | Digital Edition

Tensilica HiFi 5 DSP Voice control everywhere

Priya Balasubramanian, Senior Product Marketing Manager, IP Solutions, Cadence improve these challenges.

We’ve come a long way since the only way to interact with a device was to touch a button or type something into a keyboard. It started in the mid- 2000s with always-on applica- tions that required specialized digital signal processors (DSPs), like the Cadence ® Tensilica ® HiFi Mini, which offloads the host processor, enabling low- power battery-operated devices that always listen for keywords to wake them up. Early voice control products suffered from major problems recognizing words spoken in foreign accents and by young children (because their speech processing is still developing and they tend to shout instructions). Complicating this is the challenge of background noise. How does the device isolate the voice, and which voice should be isolated? Companies are working on algorithms that

need to be trained to understand a wider range of voices. This training requires a lot more processing power for the AI required to interpret all the possible voice variations than is in current systems. This training is often done with the computer power available in the cloud and then trans- ferred to portable devices that you use at home. Second, they need to process the voice on the device—not across the cloud—for immediate response. The processing of the AI algorithms must be very power efficient, so it can be employed by battery-operated devices. Currently, even the most advanced algorithms only work on products that are plugged into the wall to get the processing power they need. From mobile phones to appliances, our devices will be listening for voice commands. Forbes projects that,

These algorithms need to run on sophisticated, yet very low-power processors. They require excellent AI processing capabilities, as now more AI capabilities are being used to give the best results. Thankfully, even more AI capabilities are being designed into processors, such as the Tensilica HiFi 5 DSP. With better, more efficient hardware capabilities to execute the most advanced AI algorithms, these processors will open up a much more enhanced user experience. Portable Devices There are two major

c h a l l e n g e s that will be

overcome by the next generation of voice-enabled systems. First, they

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